In order to keep an eye on industry trends, it’s important to review both the positive and the negative media articles in circulation. Today, I’ve rounded up four items I think all beef producers should know about.

1. Mike Smith writes for Truth in Food about the 10 reasons why consumers dislike farmers so. The article contends that consumer misconceptions are only half of the problem; the other half is that food producers need a little education on what their customers are really thinking.

“In the spirit of knowing your adversary, Truth in Food takes you inside the modern liberal arts university Food Studies program to list the top 10 reasons today's food-consumer-activist complex so despises what you see to be nothing but the innocent pursuit of fruitfulness. Why do they hate you so?”

2. HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle admits he doesn’t like animals. Gee, imagine the irony that the leader of the nation’s largest animal rights organization really doesn’t have a fondness for the animals he claims to serve.

“We equate speciesism—the belief that one’s species is superior to all others—with racism and sexism.”

“Animals have their own rights. We’re animals, too.”

“Animals are no one’s property, and they have the right not be ‘taken,’ ‘harvested,’ or ‘culled,’ or any other euphemism for murder that wildlife managers use. They are no one’s property, just as you and I are no one’s property other than our own.”

3. Earlier this year, the New York Times ran an article, “Open The Slaughterhouses,” which called for more transparency in the meat production business. Written by Jedediah Purdy, a Duke law professor and author of “The Meaning of Property: Freedom, Community, and the Legal Imagination,” offers an essay on why transparency in slaughterhouses and feedlots would allow for consumers to make educated choices when shopping at the grocery store.

However, I can see the benefits of this transparency. We have nothing to hide, and perhaps the more our consumer sees, the more they can appreciate how livestock are handled with respect and their lives are ended in such a way that we honor that animal.

Ryan Goodman, Ag Proud blog writer, posted about this recently and enlightened me to a great project spearheaded by Temple Grandin, which provides a glimpse inside a beef plant. Called “The Glass House Project,” two videos have been released giving a tour inside a beef and pork plant. You can watch them below.

4. Food activist Michael Pollan is changing his tune on beef production and the environment. While Pollan has traditionally been harsh on the beef industry (check out “Omnivore’s Dilemma” to see what I mean), he is now saying that beef production may actually be good for the environment. Although in his mind, your production method of choice may decide whether you’re harming or hurting the planet.

“Depending on how you farm, your farm is either sequestering or releasing carbon,” says Pollan. “As soon as you plow, you’re releasing carbon. When you have a grassland, the plants living there convert the sun’s energy into leaf and root in roughly equal amounts. When the ruminant [e.g., a cow] comes along and grazes that grassland, it trims the height of the grass from, say, 3 ft. tall to 3 in. tall. The plant responds to this change by seeking a new equilibrium: it kills off an amount of root mass equal to the amount of leaf and stem lost to grazing. The [discarded] root mass is then set upon by the nematodes, earthworms and other underground organisms, and they turn the carbon in the roots into soil. This is how all of the soil on earth has been created: from the bottom up, not the top down.”

That’s today’s roundup of some of the enlightening media articles making the rounds this week. Let me know what you think about these items, and how we might reframe the conversation to better represent the beef industry.

Discuss this Blog Entry 4

JOY DAVIS (not verified)

on Jul 16, 2013

I have come to reading your newsletter every morning along with others. I am a farm wife. I was a farm daughter and am now a farm mother as well. I enjoy your articles and count them as keeping me well informed to the world's observations on agriculture. Thanks for this!

If you own and operate a business where the endpoint of your product is introducing it into the body of a consumer; transparency in production methods is essential. Otherwise, you risk the anti-your-business entities creating the image of your operation as they see fit even if it is totally false.

Second, trust is built with consistency of truths over time. Lying is but one way to be untrue. Another is to intentionally leave out information. Yet another is leaving a complete informational vacuum for your critics to fill with words that are not yours. In simplest terms, the days of "Trust me I'm your [farmer, doctor, lawyer, vendor, etc.]" are over. You must steward your market endpoint every day across multiple media platforms.

Even more, if you take the stance that what I do is perhaps unsavory to the consumer so that you decide, "I don't think we need to allow them to see this," you exacerbate all risks of misrepresentation. People do not like to be placated and prefer to make their own informational decisions.

Finally, we live in a country where we have the profound luxury of debating with a full stomach. When people are employed, healthy, and eat well they have time to think, create, and make personal decisions. Telling a well-fed country they "need" your product when in fact they can choose to believe they don't is foolhardy. Pointing out their hypocrisies does not bolster an argument, it only galvanizes opinions on either side making communication that much more difficult.

As a meat-eating supporter of the animal industries I believe in one daily motivator: We can do better.

We produced CharLean from conception to consumer, total vertical integration, and our customers loved knowing about every step and that they had a pedigree on their hamburger or steak or pet pack that went back sometimes 8 generations.

I am disappointing that you included "The 10 Reasons they Hate you So" on your list. It is an absurd, ultra-defensive, highly misleading, caricatured, hyper-political document.

If ranchers really want to tell their customers that eating beef means they have signed onto the Republican platform and the cult of Ronald Reagan, then you'll deserve the shrinking markets and vanishing influence that you'll harvest from such foolishness.